A cursory but scathing article on the ravaging of Argentinean science. Of course, no mention is made at all of the relation between these policies and the payment of the foreign debt, structural deindustrialization, educational barbarism, and so on. But well, this is The Economist. When Argentineans retake power of our own country and begin our path again, The Economist will most certainly give detailed information on how we are Fascists full of resentment. But this time has not come yet. The article mentions the Argentinean Nobel prize winners. There are a couple of things to be said on at least two of them (clearly awarded due to political more than academic reasons), but this will be theme for a future posting, if ever. As to Roberto Perazzo, if I am not wrong he is either my teacher of Physics at high school or a relative of his. He was an extraordinary teacher of physics and at the same time a vintage right-wing reactionary. His remarks on our “love for success, whether it’s Maradona, a racing-car driver or a trapeze artist” is to be predicated on our higher, ruling classes, only. It is a typical example of self-deprecation, of imperialist ideology. But, well, the article itself is worth a reading. Enrique Oteiza, also mentioned, is a mainstream "progressive". Argentina Unloved boffins Feb 22nd 2001 | BUENOS AIRES From The Economist print edition SCIENCE is important to Argentina. In a little over 50 years it has produced three Nobel prizewinners, good going for a second-world country of 37m people. Last year, to the government’s delight, it even managed to sell a locally designed nuclear reactor to Australia. Yet its scientists reckon they are unappreciated. According to Roberto Perazzo, a physics professor at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), one of the country’s main research centres, Argentines “love success, whether it’s Maradona, a racing-car driver or a trapeze artist”. They therefore like their scientists to win prizes; but they do not believe they can contribute much to the improvement of society. Mr Perazzo points to the evidence. The National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) is close to collapse; its library is out of date; research grants are down 30%; the staff has been slashed by three voluntary retirement plans, and the government has ordered a freeze on new appointments. Even the scientists who prepared the fuel for the new Australian reactor have departed. Thin funding lies at the base of this. Argentina dedicates a mere 0.35% of its GDP to science and technology. Its researchers look enviously at Brazil, which spends over twice that proportion and almost five times as much in real terms. Last year Brazil released, to world acclaim, the genomic sequencing of a bacterium that attacks oranges. On February 19th Dante Caputo, the science and technology secretary, suddenly resigned. He had been claiming stoutly that the government, despite its fiscal straitjacket, meant to increase science funding by 5.4% this year to around $700m, and would make similar annual increases in the future. He also wanted to channel research funds through the universities, which have not controlled scientific research since it was removed from their remit by a military government in junta days. Many scientists liked Mr Caputo’s plan in principle, but worried that the universities would prove too disorganised to run things properly. They also felt they had not been consulted. As he left, Mr Caputo lamented that neither the government nor scientists had supported him. History has made Argentina’s academics easy to alarm or offend. The 1970s military regimes’ distrust of intellectuals meant that the repression of “subversive literature” extended even to mathematics textbooks. Even in the relatively enlightened 1990s, Domingo Cavallo, an economy minister of deserved fame in his own field, famously told scientists to “go wash dishes”. As a result, the country has haemorrhaged scientists for decades, mainly to the United States and Europe, but also to Brazil, whose rulers, even in its own years of military rule, took a kinder view of their work. The flow was interrupted briefly with the victory in 1999 of the Alliance government, whose manifesto included an apparent commitment to raise science spending to 1% of GDP. Mr Caputo said it promised only to “tend towards” that figure, and that private investment, currently around half the level of state spending, must make up a big part of it. But many company research budgets have fallen, particularly after the wave of privatisations during the 1990s, with new owners often closing labs and shifting research work abroad. Enrique Oteiza, a social-sciences professor at UBA, points out a worrying trend. In previous decades, the scientist-emigrants were mainly senior figures fleeing political turmoil. Since the 1990s, most have been young researchers who cannot find posts after finishing their postgraduate studies. Over the past decade, largely in response to pressure from international financial institutions, the number of local research posts has been cut by almost half. It is reckoned that around a third of Argentine researchers are now working abroad; among them, maybe, a future Nobel-winner or two. Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international